DailyLit has announced the first entry in a new model that allows for the sponsored distribution of serialized digital books for free to readers. GreetingCards.com is sponsoring distribution through September 30 of College Knowledge: 101 Tips, from the University of Michigan Press, originally sold in Daily Lit form for $4.95.Release
eNews
How the Press Gets eReaders Wrong Every Day
There’s an FT column today by John Gapper that crystallizes some thoughts I’ve had recently about how poorly the press handles coverage and analysis of the budding market for e-readers. His thesis is that when it comes to e-reading devices, “The danger for Sony is that it is already too late. Amazon has grabbed the market-leading position from Sony and established a stronger brand, which is what happened with the iPod and the Walkman. Sony never managed to recover, despite trying repeatedly to match Apple.” His analysis is based on the rumor of 240,000 Kindles having sold so far (ultimately […]
Europe Develops e-Readers
Germany’s Spiegel reports that Deutsche Telecom is developing its own e-reading device to compete with the likes of Kindle and the Sony Reader (neither is currently sold in Germany). One engineer says their device is likely to be larger and have a flexible display. France Telecom’s Orange also has an electronic reading device in development.Story translated/summarized in Bookseller
Report Cites Rough Patches in Scholarly Presses' Transition to Online Access – Chronicle.com
The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the just-published 2007 report of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, calling the essay on Scholarly Press Initiatives by Donald J. Waters and Joseph S. Meisel “a page turner.” The authors “confirm what many observers have already concluded: The transition to e-books has not been as smooth and as rapid as Mellon (and many others) thought it would be. In the late 1990s, the foundation decided ‘that books would quickly follow journals into online distribution and access,’ so it put money behind two e-monograph projects, Gutenberg-e and History E-Books. The results were, to say […]
Putting a Price on AbeBooks
TechVibes–where former ABE executive (and still director) Boris Wertz is also a director and investor–estimates a price tag for Amazon’s recent purchase of $90 million to $120 million: “According to the AbeBooks website, in 2007 they did $190 million in gross merchandise volume and had 13,500 bookseller members on their platform. Based on AbeBooks’ 13.5% combined commission/service fee and minimum monthly subscription fee of $25, AbeBooks’ revenue in 2007 was approximately $30 million. If you look at comparable online e-commerce businesses like eBay with a current market cap of $32 Billion and 2007 annual revenue of $7.6 Billion, it’s safe […]
Another Kindle Guess
If you did had a dollar for every reporter with an inside source who tells them how many Kindles have really sold, you’d at least be able to buy some Amazon stock. Now TechCrunch has decided their source isn’t playing them, and declares in a headline: “We know how many Kindles Amazon has sold…. 240,000 Kindles have been shipped since November, according to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the numbers.” Not even a source at Amazon, but “close to Amazon.”TC